proprietary nvidia drivers broken since 16.04

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 2 Jul 2016 11:11:10 -0400, Peter Silva wrote:
>any ideas on how to install the nvidia driver so that I have
>a functioning system?

Hi,

first of all you should provide information about what kernel you are
using,   $ uname -rm   and exactly what nvidia driver version, and which
versions you were using with your old install. While we could guess
what kernel you used and what kernel you are using, this is less
possible for the used driver version,
http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=nvidia&searchon=names&suite=xenial&section=all

At least http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverresults.aspx/78469/en-us
claims to support your graphics.

Second step, take a look, if anything is in the log files.

$ grep EE /var/log/Xorg.0.log

LightDM seems to be the default DM:

$ sudo cat /var/log/lightdm/lightdm.log
$ sudo cat /var/log/lightdm/x-0.log
$ sudo cat /var/log/lightdm/x-0-greeter.log

As a last resort, you could build the same kernel version you used for
your last install (if needed I can explain how to build the kernel
packages) and use the same proprietary driver version, too (it requires
dkms, but it isn't rocket science, IIRC you only need to run a NVIDIA
script). This is relatively easy to do, even if you should do it for
the very first time. If you have good luck this solves the issue. If
you have bad luck, you might need to downgrade xorg, but this is
something you shouldn't try to do.

Regards,
Ralf